Resumen

FONSECA, Suzana Carielo da. Brain injury X sympton: a  question on causality. DELTA [online]. 1998, vol.14, n.2, pp. 455-466. ISSN 0102-4450.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0102-44501998000200008.

This paper aims at discussing the organicist proposal concerning aphasia. According to such a proposal, there is a direct causal relation between an impaired brain and  linguistic symptoms. I depart from and take into account the fact that language is governed by laws intrinsec/inherent to the functoning of language. This is to say that language cannot be governed by laws of any other theoretical domain. As a speech therapist and linguist, who is constantly face to face with the problematic status of the aphasic symptons, I claim that the classical causal relation mentioned above ought to be revisited. In this direction, I follow Freud (1891) who put forward Jackson’s hypothesis that the relation between lesion-linguistic symptom was not straight (Freud, 1874).

Palabras llave : Aphasia; Impaired Brain and Linguistic Symptons; Language and Aphasia; Language Functioning and Brain Functioning.